RADICAL ACTS OF LOVE

Linda Folley lived a good life - and an impressive one. A master programmer, pilot, scientist and philanthropist... Linda was fiercely brilliant, talented, and loved by everyone she met. Chief among them, her wife Camila Faraday, who met and married Linda in her late 40s. And so, it felt a cosmic injustice when just four years into their marriage, Linda was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

​

Alzheimer’s is an insidious neurodegenerative disease, progressively attacking the brain until ultimately the body gives out, and dies. Nearly 50 million people worldwide suffer from the disease. Only 5%  diagnosed are younger than 65. Linda was 52.

​

Before she’d even received her formal Alzheimer’s diagnosis, Linda could no longer drive, let alone fly. She was prone to getting lost, even in the most familiar places. On bad days, she lived in a thick fog of confusion. On good days, she was her full, vibrant, funny charismatic self.

​

Linda's family prepared for her long-term care. But as months rolled on and the disease progressed, she felt a burden to her friends and family. Linda resisted her sentence: to forget the faces of loved ones, living trapped in the prison of a healthy body with a dying mind. Two years after her diagnosis, Linda expressed her wish to die with dignity, on her own terms.

​

Together, Linda and her family would brave the legal roadblocks facing all Alzheimer’s and dementia patients wishing to take matters into their own hands. And would Linda have the faculties to carry out her radical wish?

 

Shot over the course of four years, Radical Acts of Love chronicles Linda’s remarkable journey into the dark – a tribute to Linda and her intrepid, loyal community – while offering a challenging albeit essential examination of Alzheimer’s disease.

​